In summer 1916, a farm boy from the lush green Arkansas River Valley found himself beyond the imaginable horizon, surrounded by sand, weird lizards and hundreds of fellow members of the Arkansas National Guard.
Let's let a staff correspondent of the Arkansas Gazette take up his story:
"When Will Barton, a private in Co. G Second Arkansas, from Atkins, was ordered to Fort Logan H. Roots last June with his company," Staff Correspondent reported, "he believed he had escaped the worries of working a contrary mule named Maud on his father's farm. When his father wrote him at Little Rock that he had sold the mule, Barton's happiness was complete.
"Yesterday Barton was assigned to the stable squad of his company. When he walked into the corral, the first thing that met his eye was Maud."
Such snapshots from ordinary soldiers' lives make the work of this Staff Correspondent a joy to read 100 years later. So you can imagine how his reports were pored over in 1916 by Arkansans whose brothers, cousins, fathers were also with the Guard in faraway, risky-sounding Deming, N.M. All they knew was their "boys" had been sent to war.
What do you mean, "What war?" We went over this last week, people. Must I, week after week, repeatedly oversimplify the U.S. Army's early 20th-century border campaign against Gen. Francisco "Pancho" Villa and the vacuum it opened of unguarded outposts along the border with Mexico? As I try out new and briefer ways to explain that President Woodrow Wilson called out the National Guard, including the Arkansas National Guard, to hold that border, I might well accidentally expose my own flimsy grasp on history. So, please, keep up.
The Arkansas Gazette sent one of its staff writers with the Guard, and he filed 13 informative and funny dispatches from Aug. 10 to Aug. 28. The paper didn't publish his name, merely the byline "By a Staff Correspondent."
I think his name was Earl W. Plowman.
Do you feel a thrill vibrating through these words? No? My husband wishes that you would say yes anyway because he is awfully tired of hearing about Earl Plowman.
He was the guy, the anonymous "Staff Correspondent" that Old News praised last week.
Turns out, if by accident you key in a lucky combination of Google search terms, up pops a digital archive of The Fourth Estate, a defunct weekly newspaper for people in the newspaper trade, which in 1916 published this tiny "Personals" item: "Earl W. Plowman of the Little Rock (Ark.) Gazette staff, who was taking his vacation in Missouri, was called in to accompany the Arkansas soldiers to New Mexico as staff correspondent of the Gazette."
Once I had his name, more evidence of his existence followed, but not much. He attended the University of Kansas, joined Sigma Chi, was first hired by the Gazette in 1912 and covered the Legislature. He was not hurt in 1915 when a car in which he was riding with Little Rock's coroner to view a murdered body ran into a ditch off Arch Street Pike. I lose track of him at 1917, when he resigned as telegraph editor to "go west for his health" -- a thing one did in those days.
Plowman saw all kinds of people as interesting; he did not speak Spanish; and when he ran out of serious information, he told jokes. Here are snippets from his stories, not necessarily in the order the Gazette published them:
• "One sight on the plains that attracted the men was the continual mirages on the south side of the train during the middle of the day. What appeared to be great lakes, bordered by trees, appeared many times, apparently less than a mile from the track. Some officers refused to believe the lakes were not real until they used their field glasses. At times the heat waves rising from the plains appeared at a distance to be prairie fires."
• "Six bullets which whistled over the camp of the Delaware guardsmen late today caused the machine gun battery of the Second Massachusetts encamped between the Arkansas and the Delaware troops, to prepare for action hastily. Investigation showed the bullets came from three men of the Second Arkansas who said they were hunting jack rabbits west of the camp."
• "Today was cool. It was one of the 27 cloudy days allotted the town annually according to government weather records."
• "Orders against rabbit hunting did not stop the sport. Today more than 200 men of the First Regiment under Maj. A.P. Andrews, conducted a rabbit drive, using only clubs and rocks, and more than 50 were caught or killed in two hours. The sport promises to become more popular."
• "Instead of the sand fleas which Arkansas troops feared they would find in the sand under their camp, only horned toads and desert lizards, both harmless and useful as ant eaters, have been found. Many of the men have sent horned toads home to relatives. They are ferocious looking, but harmless. The men amuse themselves by placing the toads in an anthill and watching them grab ants. The toads also catch flies. The ants in this region are comparatively scarce and have not bothered the men."
• "The Delaware men average much smaller in size than the Arkansas boys, whose unusual physique brings continual comment from Deming residents. A movie operator says he will have to put in special extra large seats in the rear of the house for the use of Arkansas patrons because others can not see over their heads when they sit in front."
KIDDING THE KIDDERS
"Delaware troops, who sought to 'kid' the Arkansas troops on their late arrival found the jokes well returned.
"'We heard the reason you boys were so late was that they had to keep you in camp an extra 10 days to get you used to wearing shoes,' a Delaware sergeant remarked to a group of First Regiment men.
"'Anyway they didn't have to put plow handles on our cars to get us away from the state,' an Arkansas man retorted."
LANGUAGE BARRIER
The first night the First Regiment spent in its camp, a local tried to pass through a Guard detail along the road between Deming and El Paso, Texas. "His English was poor and the sentry's Spanish no better," Plowman reported.
"Halt!" shouted the sentry. The man halted. "Where you going?"
"El Paso," replied the man, in a tone the sentry misunderstood.
"No, I'm hanged if you pass me. Come on to the guardhouse."
Without explaining why this was funny, Plowman reported that it took a while for the local to convince the sentry that "El Paso" was a city, not a command.
I like thinking about the folks back home pausing, brows furrowed, and then guffawing as they got it.
Next week: Told Weird Story
ActiveStyle on 08/29/2016